LOS ANGELES — On May 15, 2010, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) awarded honorary degrees to former Japanese American students who were forced to leave the University due to their forced removal and unjust imprisonment in American concentration camps during World War II.
Approximately 200 students were forced to leave the campus not long after the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942.
Not all of the former students who were identified and located attended the ceremony in UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall. But 48 former students or a family representative were in attendance, receiving diplomas with the Latin phrase, Inter Silvas Academi Restituere Iustitiam, which means “to restore justice among the groves of the academe.”
LEAD PHOTO by Darrell Kunitomi.
The following is the full video of the ceremony (length: 1:10:06). @ 2010 The Regents of the University of California. Used with permission.
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